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Thursday, March 21, 2013

Authoritarian bosses kill innovation

A top management guru
says innovation is being stifled in the Middle East by
authoritarian bosses.

The chief
executive of Malaysian-based international leadership and corporate governance
centre Iclif, Rajeev Peshawaria, who penned the management bible ‘Too Many
Bosses, Too Few Leaders’, is in Dubai holding a series of workshops with
staff from Dubai School of Government, ending today.

While most
leadership challenges were the same all around the world, he said there was ‘a
huge problem’ in the Middle East and Asia with the use of authority.

“Because I’m big and powerful, you should just obey, and that
kills innovation. That’s not leadership.” Peshawaria said a big issue for this part of the
world was the use of ‘power-distance relationships’ in relations between bosses
and workers.

“How do we lead without using position, power and authority?
We have got to look at governance. True leadership has nothing to do with
position power.”

Gandhi was a classic example of someone who led without
office, money or authority.

“The reason why junior people are not speaking up is because
they’re scared to death ... they realise very quickly ‘The best thing for me to
do is to keep my mouth shut’.”

The balance of power was shifting from the traditional
Western countries to areas like Asia and the Middle East and the best thing this part of the world could do was to
learn from the mistakes of the previous superpowers, Peshawaria said.

“We have had 100 years of Western dominance, economically at
least, and now Asia and the Middle East are coming into their own and I think
the best thing we can do is avoid the mistakes of the West. With success comes
arrogance.”

Peshawaria said though it was controversial, he never changed
his leadership style to accommodate different cultures.

“Yes, there are cultural differences. The way you show
respect in the Middle East is different from the way you show respect in Japan and the way you show respect in the
UK ... but what we expect from our
bosses is the same, regardless of where we live.”

Treating people fairly and with respect, helping them
understand what they were capable of and giving them “a vision of a better
future,” were universally important traits in good leaders, said the man who
has lived in eight different countries, often working in managerial positions.

Peshawaria said the two-day course for the Dubai School of
Government would on the first day focus on people identifying their own purpose
and values in life, and on day two discussing how to take other people along
with that purpose. The course was the first step to getting people to open
their minds to becoming leaders, he said.

“Can anybody be a leader? The answer is a big yes. Will
everybody be a leader? The answer is no.”

Anyone who was committed to being a real leader needed to be
prepared to be isunderstood, lonely and unpopular as it was hard to step out
of the mould and call for change.

“Many leaders in history were killed for proposing a better
future others thought was wrong, only for history to find out it was right.”

Peshawaria said the country’s leaders had taken the first
steps of real leadership with Shaikh Zayed, and today’s leaders were already
working out how to diversify their economy and draw it away from a dependency
on oil.